The Gargle - Mice cell eggs | SVB | Office cake

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

Vittorio Angelone and James Nokise join host Alice Fraser for episode 103 of The Gargle, the weekly topical comedy podcast from The Bugle - with no politics!🐁 Mice cell eggs🏦 The fall of SVB🍰 Office cake🖥 Workers, go home🇮🇪 ReviewsProduced by Ped Hunter and Chris Skinner.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's producer Chris from The Bugle here. Did you know that I have a new series of my podcast, Richie Firth Travel Hacker, out now? It's the show where Richie Firth and I talk about how to make travel better in our very special way. In this series, we discuss line bikes, Teslas, the London overground, and a whole bunch of other random stuff that possibly involves wheels

or tracks or engines of some variety. God, what a hot sell this is. I mean, you must be so excited. Listen now. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite.

Cycling has Lance Armstrong. Baseball has its steroid era. Curling has... Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships, houses divided, corporate rivalry, and a performance-enhancing broom. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate, available now. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

Acast.com. This is a podcast from The Bugle. who hasn't really existed in generations, his precarious existence at the fringes of the hedgerow social hierarchy teeters on the brink of sustainability. The thin veneer of civility over the rapacious jaws of Mr Fox is fraying badly. He's gone from trying to seduce Mrs Titmouse's hot daughter out on a picnic to full-on mail fraud. A mysterious invitation, a free boat ride to an uninhabited island? What kind of idiot would RSVP to something like that?

Mr Fox is starving. It's almost enough for you to feel sorry for Mr Fox, except for one thing. You remember that night in the chicken coop last full moon when a bunch of prime layers suddenly became the gargle. To Sonic Glossy Magazine, to the Bugles Audio Newspaper of Visual World, this is the gargle. I'm your host, Alice Fraser. We bring you all of the news, none of your politics. This week's guest editors are Victoria Angelone and James Nukise. Welcome. Hello. Hello.

Good chat. Thank you for having us along. Oh, thank you. It's a delight. It's a delight to have you. Before we put our hands creepily on one another's shoulders and begin the slightly sexual massage circle that is this week's top stories, let's have a look at the front cover of the magazine.

The front cover this week is Michelle Yeoh punching the head off the Oscar statue in Triumph. The satirical cartoon this week is libertarian tech lords trying to convince people that the banking industry needs less government than immediately turning around asking for bailouts, just watching the gods of dramatic irony shoot themselves in the foot with Chekhov's gun. Top story this week is science news. This is the breakthrough that we no longer need women, hooray, because eggs for making babies have been made from male mice cells. Nice.

Yeah. Male mice cells are now, mice can just live in a cool, homosocial bro environment. And if they are capable of doing the science that would allow them to extract their own cells and turn them into eggs, of course, assuming they develop that ability, which I assume they will now that they don't have pussy to distract them. James Nwokise, you've seen a mouse. Can you unpack this story for us?

Sure. Look, it's all going on at Harvard Medical School, where essentially what's happened is a bunch of bros have got together and they've said enough is enough. As often happens in these strange sci-fi stories, there's a Japanese scientist, Professor Hayashi Katsuhiko. Sorry to do science at you, but no group of bros has ever said enough is enough. The definition of a group of bros is that enough is never enough. Well, look, the important thing well they've look that's the the

important thing is they've had too many beers and they've gone bro let's let's get guys pregnant you know there's already protesters outside going to find mail uh you know they've had a very interesting idea of um they can create a baby using someone's sperm and artificially created eggs uh nothing i've seen so far uh in this alice has told me why uh apart from hey let's let's do that let's um you know some people are saying it's it's a queer rights science, it's going to allow queer couples to be able to have, but I feel like that was already there. I feel what they've

accidentally done is set up a whole bunch of women who want a second child but have had the first child to look at their guys in a sexual relationship and go, hey, your turn now. And I'm going to be honest with you guys, you know, morally, I feel good about that.

Morally, you know, spiritually, I feel good about that. Physically, I'm not sure. You know, as I read the story to you, I feel my testicles just retracting just a little bit inside me. Every paragraph, they just go a little bit, as though they're just going to go into a corner and just rock themselves to sleep later on tonight. To be fair, I don't think I need to explain pregnancy to you right now. But when you do, Alice, I will come to you. I will come to you and say, Alice, what is going on? What are these flushes? Why do I have cravings? Why is that the only thing I know about pregnancy

it is this strange thing where people have gone oh well we've made men eggs so we don't need women anymore and i'm like where are you growing those where are you growing those little babies that you want to grow in like some guy's like colon is that what's gonna happen you're just gonna shove it up some guy's ass and hope for the best? I don't think that's a good place to grow a fetus. I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure you can't grow a fetus in some guy's ass. Well, I mean, at the moment, as with all these mice studies, it's a very long way from mice to humans.

Otherwise, I mean, the number of times we've cured mouse cancer, let's be honest, it's sort of extraordinary number of cancer-free mice running around there at this point. It's a shame they all have to be euthanized after the study for ethical reasons. I don't know. Well, they'd be too powerful, you see. True, because our solution to mice is to give them cancer. Well, you saw what happened to Lance Armstrong. You can't have these arrogant, cheating mice running about the place.

That'd be terrible they're all blood doping well I think that this is an interesting prospect for uh solving fertility problems and particularly uh giving same-sex couples the chance to have uh children that are genetically both of theirs in a way that is important to some people and not important to others. I know secondhand of a lesbian commune where they just passed around a bowl of mixed sperm. So I kind of prefer that roll the dice attitude. But for some people, it's more important to have genetic material from two parents be part of the child. So the child is an expression, importantly, of them, because that's what all children

should be. Just you, but more so and better and without the failure. Last week, we're one step closer to putting that into action in a laboratory. Do you think that mice are up for any of this? Have we figured out the maximum level of cognizancy? Who's asking the mice like i just feel like we don't necessarily understand how or where animals are and i feel like before we really got to start to understand how or where mice are before i'm comfortable with

us just just doing weird shit to them all the time yeah it does seem to be all in a bit of a jolly as well this this this story's so strange because it does feel like there was just a, like somebody just woke up drunk in a science meeting or like maybe like a philosophy class. And they were like, you know, which came first, the chicken or the egg? And some absolutely wrecked guy just went, mice? Is that the right, that feels like the right answer. Egg fried mice your ads now because you can't be what you can't buy this episode of the podcast is brought to you

by the feel-good hit of the summer he's hard-working he loves the american people and he's the only politician in washington who never told a lie. There's just one problem. He's a shark. Coming this summer, President Jaws. Democracy just got hungry. Did you know that you can make a compass out of a leaf, a magnetised paperclip and some water? Half a glass of water, now with half a compass.

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Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite. Cycling has Lance Armstrong. Baseball has its steroid era. Curling has... Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships, houses divided, corporate rivalry, and a performance-enhancing broom. It was a year I'd like to forget.

Broomgate. Available now. like to forget. Broomgate, available now. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com. Now it's time for Startup Banks News. Now I continue my long-running obsession with tech bros and the terrible things that they try to do with money. This is the fall of the Silicon Valley Bank, which has been taking up a lot of airspace in the last week. Vittorio Angeloni, you once imagined some money.

Can you unpack this story for us a little? I love imagining money. I pretend I'm so much wealthier than I am at all times. Every time I book an Uber, I go, I'll probably get paid for something soon. That sounds fair. But basically, Silicon Valley's bank, which is like the main one that all these tech bros use and all these venture capitalists to do these. And it's just this tech boom it happened with the dot-com thing where if you had anything dot-com at one point it was like well that's worth a billion actually because you know dot dot com and it's all just vague speculation around that sounds like it's probably worth a lot of money and it's this bizarre thing where like net makes a massive loss every year, but somehow like they're the biggest company in the world.

And all this stuff and all these venture capitalists basically had all this money sitting in this bank. But as we know about banks, they don't actually keep your money. They take it and they go use it on stuff. And when that all fell through, basically everyone tried to take their money out of the bank at the same time. And the bank went, hey, well, we weren't, we don't have that. Yes. And they started to take their money out in the traditional pyramid scheme, which is the richest people first, because they heard about it first. And then they told the people beneath them, and then they told the people beneath them. And so, of course,

it was the small investors who ended up holding the bag and whether they are insured and whether they're getting bailed out or not is currently an issue of great contention of course the collapse of silicon valley bank is a very complicated tale of economically significant financial instruments which is difficult for lay people to understand but for basic everyday purposes just understand that when i say financial instruments somebody is getting played. Many Silicon Valley thought leaders continuously present Silicon Valley success as a function of a kind of a ruthless Darwinian survival of the fittest meritocratic thunderdome situation when in in fact it mostly seems to be like a hype game gold rush for angel VC money dumps that

eventually some VC will come and you'll pitch to them and they'll drop a billion dollars on your head and then you can sell out of your idea before you can figure out whether it actually would have made a difference in society or not. And so I always find myself in these stories racked for sympathy for a lot of the major players because so much of what they do is, to put it kindly, bullshit. because so much of what they do is, to put it kindly, bullshit. Yeah, it's also boring. Like their whole job is like gambling on like whether a business is going to make it. But also there's like this no risk thing because the government's always bailed them out.

So there's no downside. I'm just like, yeah, right. But I put a hundred quid on Messi to kiss someone during the World Cup. And who's like, who's bailing me out? But it's fun because there's no safety net. These guys are just boring gamblers. That's all it is. The bank was actually founded after a poker game.

So you're bang on. In 1983, there was a poker game where a whole bunch of guys were, hey, we should basically a bunch of tech bros. This is my own spin on it. a bunch of tech bros got drunk and were like, why don't we have our own bank? But this is the thing, right? They've abstracted value from the creation of value. So the question is whether a business will make it, not whether a business will make

a product that people will buy. It's whether a business will make it in this weird silicon valley kind of economy which is essentially that the bigger fish eat the smaller fish uh and then money comes out the back end somehow yeah nothing exists this is everything this is such a it's this is the way the whole world works isn't it and every time i'm confronted with it i want to throw me out the window well it was like when when they went to court when uber went to court to argue that Uber drivers were not the main product of Uber. Because they didn't want to have to accept that they were employing these people and therefore needed to pay them properly and give them sick leave and things like that. So I wish them all the best.

leave and things like that. So I wish them all the best. Could I just read out a sentence which I feel encompasses this whole situation? This is from the Los Angeles Times, from the tech columnist. And this really, I feel, encapsulates the attitude that we're all getting frustrated with. It goes, as many have pointed out, the bank should have probably seen trouble brewing as the Fed hiked interest rates and made its intention to continue to do so clear. And the bank should have communicated its strategy to account holders after a crisis seemed imminent, et cetera, et cetera. And I feel the et cetera really nails the whole attitude of Silicon Valley, like, ah, yada, yada, yada. Because you're right, they're treating the whole thing like it's a computer game and all they've done is just die you're right, but they're treating the whole thing like it's a computer game

and all they've done is just die in the game. So they're going to restart. Yeah, they're just fine. Well, I mean, I think the reason why this has made such big news is because it is

kind of dramatic irony. These are the people very much responsible for lobbying against things like Dodd-Frank, regulation of the banks, from the perspective of Australia, where we actually have rules about how people play with our money it looks like the world west out there and these

people have been arguing for more and more freedom to gamble with other people's money on products that don't exist and then the moment that the whole thing collapses which in like these are the reasons that regulations were invented and they they kind of walk in and think, oh, I can I can fix this by making lots of money for myself. And then the moment it collapses, they turn around and put their hand out and ask to be bailed out, which I feel is, you know. Ironic. Yeah, they're just little toddlers who eat too many sweets at a birthday party and then throw up and go, why did you let me eat so many sweets? That's all it is your review section now as you know each week we asked our guest editors to bring in something to review out of five stars uh what have you brought in for us this week vittorio i've brought in a

sketch from snl where uh they they did an impression of Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell. And I don't know if you know that they did an impression of Brendan Gleeson, former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. And it went a little something like. And then they kind of pretended they couldn't, you know, understand them. And then he left with the Colin Farrell character, who similarly was talking kind of like, you know, and then they sent them off and they said, oh, they haven't even started drinking yet. Which is really funny because, you know, Colin Farrell has been sober for many years and has struggled with that for a long time. So I just think it's really good that completely surreal and baseless comedy has returned to the mainstream.

So five stars for me for that one. I'm sorry, I couldn't understand your wacky accent. How many stars? Five, eleven, twenty. And I assume those stars were great. Like it's so American ideas about foreign accents are genuinely deranged. Yeah. Like I shouldn't have to go in and say water with a hard R for someone to hydrate me.

Yeah. I mean, England's hardly better. I'm not going to give them that credit either. I feel the New Zealanders should stay quiet in an accent conversation. Jimmy, what have you brought in for us this week? I have bought the moments you realize your 70-year-old Samoan dad has never seen a John Wick film. So basically what happened is my dad, like many Polynesians, massive action fan, and he turned to me over dinner earlier this evening and went oh

do you know anything about these John Wick films I said oh yeah dad they're amazing action films you know oh I thought they were uh accountant films or thrillers or political because he's in a suit and he's never holding a gun it's just Keanu in a suit so my dad has seen this pop up highly recommended in his action-filled Netflix for months going, I don't want to watch this banking film. And he's got a TV in his bedroom now. No one knows why. And so I put it on for him. And then I was just like at the stairs, like I was four years old, just sneaking around the corner, watching this man just see one of the greatest action dynasties of the modern era unfold in front of him.

Like when that dog died, my dad felt that dog die. And he's just been sitting there on the edge of his chair with his fist raised cheering John Wick righteously on for the last 90 minutes. So five stars. We've got a very highly ranked review section this week, five stars and five stars. But I feel like one of those five stars was sarcastic.

Yeah, John Wick's not that good. He's doing an Irish accent the whole film. I really couldn't tell. Cake news now, and this is the news, that British office cake culture has come under fire and Britons are sticking to their cake full guns ahead. My metaphors are so mixed.

Like a cake. James Nukise, you've eaten cake before. Can you unpack this story for us? Big, big cake person, as my fans will know, Alice. Look, essentially, let's just break it down. They're saying that Britain's cake culture is unhealthy. It's part of the reason that they're in such bad shape physically. They want to see less cake because they're getting obese.

But here's the thing. Cake is so good. And I feel if Britain was still part part of europe this never would have happened i think what's happened is the british have been stuck with just british cakes for for a couple of years now and that's just starting to feel the results of only eating british cakes and and they just need to i feel they need to just triple down and get some triple layer jam sponge cake going. Like more cake, I feel is the answer to this. So, I mean, the concern is that people bring cakes into the office to liven up office culture, which, let's be honest, is incredibly bland and tasteless.

Like so many Anglo treats and that this is contributing to a nationwide crisis in obesity. Vittorio, can you speak to this at all? I mean, it's interesting that a culture that is based largely around a woman saying, let them eat cake, has ended up in this situation where people are going, well, maybe don't let them eat cake, actually. Maybe that's the solution. But I just love that nobody takes responsibility for anything anymore. There's just like really fat people going,

well, I mean, but the thing is Janet brought in a cake. So, I mean, that's why. And it's like, what? So if Janet brought in a bucket of kale smoothies every day, would you be addicted to kale smoothies? No, it's not just because it's there. You don't eat your keyboard just because it's there. You make decisions take

some control of your life you idiots oh it's harder than an office though this is the thing the office environment is so uh starved of any kind of uh excitement or you know flavor as it were genuinely i got like heaps of passive aggressive pressure about having curly hair in the office because it was so exciting and it might make people have a feeling um when I worked at a law firm I got like comments at least once a day that I should consider straightening my hair because it would make me look more presentable and neater to which I quit and became a comedian but the point is that cakes are the only small kind of acceptable narrow band through which you can sneak any pleasure or luxury into the office environment.

So of course people overindulge in them because they're just a moment of warmth in an otherwise bleak soulless future that stretches on. I have a solution. I have a solution. Bring a solution bring cocaine back to offices absolutely i second that look they've they've banned cocaine they've banned alcohol they've banned smoking and now they're coming for cake how do they expect people to work under these conditions i know you can't even harass people anymore boo offices who the hell is meant to be out there cold calling to see if you need double glazed windows without some cake

to fall back on and go it's it's only seven more hours to go i don't subscribe to the idea that the smaller and more condensed a woman becomes the the more powerful she is. I don't think it's like orange juice. I think people should be whatever size they want to be. I think the problem here is not so much obesity as it is the fact that office culture is so horrendous that people feel the need for some addictive substance to soothe the ever-rising anxiety about their life choices. And so I wouldn't say... Sorry. I got distracted when you were talking about small, dense women

and really tuned out for a second. I like my women to be a singularity. Do you know any singularity women? I do. All my singularity ladies, put your hands up. Impossible. Yes, they don't have hands. In singularity there is no up i blame open offices i blame open offices for this whole cake fiasco back when we didn't have to stare at each other and know what was on our desks no one cared about cake being brought in it was a once in a

blue moon thing you get rid of the walls, people have to look into each other's eyes and can't delude themselves that everyone else is happy and they're the only soulless person in the office. Now you've got to bring cake in every week. Well, this is the thing. When you had your own office, you could have your own shame stash and eat it when you want it. Now there's like weird social pressure to not have the cake because if you don't have the cake, then you're the Puritan judging everyone else

for having the cake. So you have to have some cake, but you have to pretend that you don't want the cake, but that you're just having the cake because, oh, a little bit tempting. And then you have to pretend the cake is nice,

which it never is. I lasted a year. I worked in a law firm for a year. They're always bored at the last moment in a panic. And, you know, offices are devolving. They're going away. They've got rid of singular offices. They're getting rid of wars. They're getting rid of dividers. And now they're getting

rid of desk space. Now it's open offices and you've got to go get a cubbyhole, a little tray you've got in a cubbyhole with all your stuff. And then you just set up like they're literally turning office spaces into school tables. And they're also disappearing. I mean, loads of people are working from home, but I'm going to try and fight back against this war on cake. I'm going to get an office job where you work from home and I'm going to deliver everyone a cake. Now it's time for our Please Go Home news. Speaking of, this follows very nicely on from our previous story.

This is the news that a small IT company in the central Indian city of Indore has come up with a way of sending its employees home through technology. Basically, it shuts down the computer and tells them to f*** off. Vittorio, you've told some people to f*** off. Can you unpack this story for us? Well, basically, yeah, it's this software where when your working day finishes, when you've done your allocated hours that you're paid to do,

it basically flashes up a little message on the screen, and it says, you've worked as much as you were planning to work today and it kind of just shuts off your computer in the middle of whatever you're doing. Oh wait, it's 10.40. Very nice. I hope he fully commits to that joke and just doesn't come back.

For those of you who are not present in this Zoom call on which we're recording the podcast. Vittorio Angeloni has just f***ed up. And hopefully he returns with cake. If he doesn't bring cake, I'll be furious. James, do you think this would make you more or less productive having a ticking time bomb on your work clock? I honestly feel it would make me more productive. Such a good joke. You've been laughing without pause since you left so good i love someone who commits to a bit particularly a bit that will not translate to audio yeah no

not at all you'll have to put in a sound effect of me or something we'll just get the audio of brendan gleasing going oh he's coming back he's coming back. He's coming back, guys. I mean, also, I mean, pretending that Irish accents are incomprehensible in modern filmmaking when literally 100% of all actors are incomprehensible in modern filmmaking because of the weird, muddy soundscapes that are engineered now to feel, like, immersive, as though your life were the life of a 75-year-old man

who's losing his hearing but can't admit it that's that's like that's how i like to imagine films when i watch them now yeah and also like 25 of the acting nominations were irish actors so it's like well they're getting something across for f**ks sake it's like it's just so ridiculous it's such a ridiculous thing to say it's wild if you knew that your clock was ticking down to the end of the day would you find yourself more or less productive and do you think this is a good thing overall that they're not letting you work late i think it's a good thing because i think it like depends on the job but i think what they're trying to

address that deeper issue of like the social conditioning and the burnout because that's sort of where this all comes from is they're like worried about people burning out um it's it's pretty amazing like to just have your job oh don't worry about finishing the job just go home because i think a lot of us have worked in environments where it's like you stay until the job's done and you'll get a pat on the back. And that's kind of how we're conditioned, especially in the arts, because what's the timer on this thing is like 50 hours or 45. It's something where if you work in the arts, you're like, that's it.

And then you don't have to work anymore for the rest of the week if you've done that many hours. That's insane. Well, this is the other thing, like effectiveness and then like culture. So there is a level of productivity that you just can't achieve from slogging away at it. You need to like take a break and leave. But if you have an office culture where you need to be seen eating cake, for example, you never leave, even if you're not being particularly productive. So I think the hope here is also that they don't burn people out and then lose useful employees you always have to to acknowledge

that they're not ever acting out of the goodness of their heart um vittoria i guess it's the same argument for like the four-day work week where if you actually condense it down and there's so many people who get their days worked on in about two hours and their boss just tells them to look busy for the rest of it um but yeah it's this argument that yeah if you do condense and if you put a little bit more of a stretch on it especially when people are working from home and like it just can extend and do like well i'll just have slightly later dinner i'll just wait until that happens i'll do this and then i'll just get this little bit done and it is like if you put a hard and it's something that like look we're all like freelancers

doing our own thing you have to set these like otherwise it's just endless you're just always like oh i can reply to that email now i can do this now i can do whatever so you do just need to like draw a line in the sand and if there's a little like i i hope it's still the microsoft paperclip guy who pops up and goes hey Hey, we're not paying you now. Piss off, you bastard. It looks like you're participating in a toxic office culture. Would you like to order cake? That brings us to the end of the show.

I'm flipping through the ad section at the back. James, have you got anything to plug? I'm going to the Melbourne Comedy Festival, which is only my second ever time. So I'm looking forward to doing that. And I'll be at Campari House at a time that can be found on the Melbourne Comedy Festival's website. And my rugby podcast continues

called Fair Game Pacific Rugby Against the World. So you can check that out wherever you find podcasts. It's a great podcast, Fair Game Pacific Rugby Against the World. So you can check that out wherever you find podcasts. It's a great podcast, Fair Game Pacific Rugby Against the World. It's sort of like investigative journalism. I feel like you maybe missed your calling as an investigative journalist uncovering the dark underbelly of the scrum, she says, remembering rugby. Having been bullied at high school and spending my time at the bottom of many a ruck, I feel this is justice coming full circle. And Voria have you got anything to plug first of all i just want to say that's such a

funny way to insult the comedian to be like it's gonna let it slide it's absolutely gonna let it slide you missed your calling how bad were my jokes this episode the question is how good is the investigative journalist we've known each other for years. She was at my wedding. She's very tired. I'm sure she didn't mean to tell me to quit my career in comedy at the end of her show. I'm sure that's what... No, it's not what I was saying at all.

I mean, you're such a good comedian, but I really enjoy your investigative journalism as well. Thank you, Alice. I took it in the spirit it was intended. This will be my last show at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. It's the farewell tour i have two things to plug i i'm going on tour starting next month around the uk and ireland got a big show in london at the lesser square theater and then loads all around the country so i'm sure there's someone nearby where you are and i also have a podcast with my i do it with my friend Mike.

It's called Mike and Vittorio's Guide to Parenting. Neither of us have kids. We are trying to attract an audience of young mums. So I hope you'll come and join us. You can find me online at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. It's a one-stop shop full of my stand-up specials, podcasts, blogs, my weekly Tea with Alice salons and my weekly writers meetings

and workshops if you want to write with me at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. I'm also doing my show Twist at the Newcastle Fringe Festival on Thursday and Friday of this week. Then I'll be in Melbourne,

then Tokyo, then London, then Edinburgh. Find that all at patreon.com slash alicefraser. This is a Bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production. Your editor is Ped Hunter. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next week.

You can listen to other programs from the Bugle, including The Bugle, Catharsis, Tiny Revolutions, Top Stories, and The Gargle, wherever you find your podcasts.